Indian food is great. Perhaps too great

IN 1999 Chittaranjan Yajnik, an Indian doctor and researcher, was photographed with his friend and collaborator, John Yudkin, a British professor of medicine. Then in early middle age, both men appear trim and healthy. Indeed, the two had the same “body-mass index”, a widely used if imperfect measure of obesity: 22.3, around the middle of the ideal range. But further testing revealed a stark difference. Body fat made up just 9.1% of Dr Yudkin’s mass. The result for Dr Yajnik was more than twice as high, at 21.2%. This came to be known as the Y-Y paradox and helped popularise the concept of the South Asian “thin-fat” body type.

“Thin-fat” is a metaphor for India today. The country suffers from a dual burden of poverty-induced undernutrition and a growing overweight population. According to the latest figures, among 15-to-49-year-olds, 19% of women and 16% of men are underweight. At the same time, 24% of women and 23% of men are overweight. India is replacing one problem with another: in the decade and a half to 2021, the proportion of thin women halved even as that of fat ones doubled. Among men, both the fall and the rise were even more pronounced. According to a new study by the Lancet, a medical journal, 9.8% of Indian women and 5.4% of men are obese, up from 1.2% and 0.5% in 1990.